Organ donation after death: thoughts and experiences?

Hey there
Goodnight

Man, what have you guys done to this thread... sorry, fellas... but I'm gonna have to clear this out, nothing personal.

I'm going to go ahead and read through everything you managed to dump here.

So, you guys are all coworkers... medical techs or whatever it is you do...

Anyway, you’ve got this until tomorrow, and then it’s headed straight to the scrap heap or the bottomless pit 🙂

In Australia, being a donor isn't considered a big deal.
All of us who are donors have it marked right on our driver's licenses.
The entire country uses a computer link between hospitals to speed up
the whole process.
There was once a famous 48-year-old cricketer who died after a head injury; his four organs were transplanted into four different people.

If everyone lived in fear that someone would kill them just because they're a donor, we’d never have any donors at all. People watch way too many dumb movies and listen to too many urban legends.

Just last week, we saw an example of a few people who would have been dead before hitting age 20 if it hadn't been for heart or lung transplants.

It’s common knowledge that you can go to some Asian countries and get a very cheap deal
for your money—like a new kidney sold by someone living in poverty.

On the flip side, someone in Australia placed an ad in the newspaper looking for a new kidney, and a matching donor stepped up and gave their kidney for nothing at all.

🙂 😉 😎

Casey Palmer5 said:It’s pretty obvious you guys are all coworkers... medical techs or something, right?

Basically, you've got until tomorrow before this whole thing gets tossed into the abyss.🙂

We're just a bunch of sick bracha 😁
Man, forget it—no big deal!👍

Go ahead and delete it, but it won't change anything—we’ll still be stuck here, grimly preparing people for explantation.

Oh, come on, don't be like that 🙂))

(p.s., I'm not deleting this, my hands are tied today 🙂 )

I've already signed everything on my health insurance card, so they can just take it all🙂 if it means helping even one person, or if it makes even one small thing better, then I feel like I've done something good with my life👍

electricstag8 said:Go ahead and delete it—doesn't change the fact that we're still out here prepping people for explantation.

Preach! All this resistance is just a waste of energy. Long live explantation & reanimation! 🙂

Dave said:Tuco, I suspect there are countless reasons—ranging from the fact that organ donation isn't properly promoted or even understood here, to the way the government handles things... well, let's just say it's complicated. Here is what I’ve heard firsthand from medical circles: when I mentioned wanting to become an organ donor, a doctor friend of mine told me, "Don't you dare." Apparently, beyond the official transplant waiting lists, there are unofficial ones—lists where surgeons allegedly pocket tens of thousands of dollars in cash. If, for instance, someone is brought in after a car accident and their organs match a patient willing to pay for a spot at the top of the list, they might not even try to save the victim. Instead, they call the recipient, prep them for surgery, and essentially let the donor pass away just so the transplant can proceed for cold, hard cash.

I used to think this was just baseless hearsay—until a physician actually told me the same thing... 🙄 😲 😠

Exactly!
My sister is a physician, and she witnessed the aftermath of a woman whose heart was still beating—someone who actually had a chance at survival after a wreck.
That was the first time she ever admitted feeling ashamed to wear her white coat.

During an autopsy, removing tissue samples is easy enough; eyelids close up perfectly fine—it all happens without anyone asking a single question.

It's the mafia in white coats.

That other thread felt like I was reading a textbook translated from Chinese or something.😁
1. What exactly does typing mean in this context?
2. What is the WHO?

Thanks in advance.🙂

Standardizing or checking if the donor's organ actually matches the potential recipient. Usually, during the prep phase for explantation, they'll pull some blood samples and a lymph node from the groin area of the donor. Obviously, beyond just the basic blood type and Rh factor, there’s a whole laundry list of other factors that determine whether an organ is truly compatible between the donor and the future recipient.

The rules regarding organ explantation are actually pretty straightforward and precise; there is absolutely no way they're taking organs from living people. Before any preparation for explantation can even get off the ground, brain death has to be officially declared. Only then do the extensive tests and protocols to confirm brain death kick in, and only after that is everything verified do they approach the next of kin for consent. Once the family gives the green light, the process moves on to tissue typing and assessing the overall condition of the organs slated for transplant. That’s the procedure, plain and simple.

The heart can keep on thumping for a while even after someone’s head has been completely taken off. Would you honestly bother keeping someone like that alive?
I'm just saying, having a heartbeat isn't exactly a definitive sign that someone is truly living.

Thanks, electricstag8, just if someone could clarify for me what the WHO actually is...

The HLA system is essentially the primary complex of tissue compatibility genes in humans 🙂

I'm not sure if this topic has already been covered here. If it has, just point me toward the right thread and thanks. 🙂
If not, I’m genuinely curious about your thoughts on this. Would you be willing to donate your organs after you pass away?
Personally, the idea appeals to me. I'm just wondering how one actually goes about getting an organ donor card—what's the process? Is there a specific form to sign or something similar?
If anyone knows the drill... let me know. 🙂
👋

Thanks to the moderator 😘

Here’s a little more data from Australia.
Australia has a population of 20 million, and 4.7 million people are on the donor registry.
During Donor Week (similar to when that famous cricketer passed away and donated his organs to six different people), 20,000 people signed up as donors.

Right now, there are 1,800 Australians waiting on the transplant list.
That includes 1,488 needing kidneys, 65 needing hearts, 110 for livers, and 124 for lungs.

Back in 2000, David Claridge, who was 58 at the time, received a new heart from a 22-year-old woman who had passed away due to brain complications; her organs were shared among six different recipients.

David received that heart just two weeks before doctors told him he wouldn't make it. He lives in Perth and is planning to 1.7 miles ride his bike all the way to Adelaide, where the donor was from, just to meet the donor's mother.

👋 👋

🙂 😉 😎

Man, I haven't read this much nonsense in one place for a long, long time.
Basically, every single doctor who has a donor under their care follows the rule about notifying the next of kin first, and honestly, regardless of any permissive law that might allow otherwise, nobody is ever harvested without that consent.
As for those claims about "taking a heart from a living person," I’m just not even going to go there, and neither am I going to address the talk about "suboptimal treatment" being used to trigger someone's death just to get an organ.
Regarding this whole "organized mafia" theory: the teams handling the harvesting and the transplantations aren't involved in the actual medical care of a potential donor, nor are they part of the process to determine brain death. Both teams only find out once everything is fully prepared. So, I guess the idea of some conspiracy involving surgeons, anesthesiologists (who usually act as the team coordinators), and ER doctors—who aren't "saving" donors but rather rushing them straight to the OR for harvesting—is a bit of a stretch.

That case at the Mayo Clinic had even more "gems," if you can believe it; I think the mother was accusing everyone, claiming her son was harvested because of his religion, or because Statehood Day was coming up, or that some opening ceremony was supposed to celebrate a successful transplant.

So, to wrap this up: you really should feel a bit ashamed for making such sweeping judgments and accusations about things you clearly don't understand, especially regarding a job that isn't easy or pleasant by any means. I just hope that if this level of suspicion stays common among people, none of you ends up needing an organ that those "mafia guys in white coats" might deny you.